Now that’s the kind of tough leadership we need around here!

We should’ve elected John Kerry four years ago. He really knows how to lay the hammer down!

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for hearings on the mounting piracy threat as the fate of an American cargo-ship captain remained in limbo Thursday.

Yeah! Hearings! That’ll show ’em!

Meanwhile, somebody else is actually getting ready to do something:

“Our special operations people have been itching to clean them up. So far, no one has let them,” (Retired U.S. Ambassador Robert) Oakley told the Daily News.

The veteran diplomat, who also was ambassador to Pakistan, said teams of Army Delta Force or Navy SEALs “could take care of the pirates in 72 hours” if given the order to strike

Those plans are for attacking pirates at their bases of operations, not necessarily attacking them as they attack a ship. It’s a big ocean.

There’s already a U.S. destroyer on the scene of this most recent attack. I wonder if they’ve got Marines on board, and if so whether their officers have had to specifically order them not to jump overboard and swim to the lifeboat where some of the pirates are holding the civilian ship’s captain.

One more thing: the first story I linked says this is the first pirate attack on U.S. sailors in 200 years, but the 6th attack overall in those waters (off Somalia) in the past week.